


To Embers

by eidolon



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Angst, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-30
Updated: 2011-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-28 12:50:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eidolon/pseuds/eidolon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Anders was executed, and Orsino and Meredith were dealt with, Hawke found a lull in the fighting and used it to bring his love's body home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Embers

"Shut up," Hawke snarled, tears and blood stinging his eyes and obscuring his vision. He gathered Anders' body in his arms and then over his shoulder. He could hardly stand, and he was bleeding from far more places than seemed healthy. Aveline opened her mouth to say something about safety, but Hawke's swift, vicious glance stilled her. His companions, such as they remained, were gathering their weapons from the battlefield. Bethany was burning Meredith's crown in her hands, fire causing it to melt and run between her fingers. Varric avoided looking directly at anyone, though he stood near Bethany. 

 

"Get everyone somewhere safe," Hawke told him, and began walking in a direction that might lead to what remained of his home, and which might have been the near-antithesis of 'safe,' but he was past listening to what anyone else had to say. In the distance, burning parts of the Chantry continued to collapse and the ominous sounds of metal clashing seemed to come from everywhere at once. 

 

He didn't look like a Champion anymore. Pieces of his armour were left behind where they had been cut or fallen off. Blood and filth obscured his features and he kept his head down. It was impossible to tell how long it took to walk home. His shoulder was numb and he had scrubbed some of the mess from his eyes, but had not surveyed any of his wounds. Leaving a trail of blood seemed inevitable, whether it were literal or figurative. When they had the time, the city would raze his house, he knew. But he would be done before then.

 

Hawke had no idea what might have happened to his house key, and he had told Bodahn to take Sandal and Orana and flee as soon as things had started to look dark in the city. Bodahn was clever and had survived life alongside the Hero of Ferelden and the Champion of Kirkwall, and Hawke trusted him to continue surviving. He had given them the mabari, just in case. The dog liked Orana; he would look after her as well as Hawke would have. 

 

The house empty, and most of Hightown cowering in their cellars, he would have shrugged if he had the capacity, prior to simply kicking his own door in. Inside, he finally laid Anders down, as gently as he was able, on the long dining table. 

 

His sole seeming-consideration for himself was to wash his hands and arms and his face, and to try to get some of the blood out of his hair. But the cleansing was less for himself and more because he did not want to get more of it on Anders.

 

Hawke filled a fresh bucket and found Orana's stash of rags, and went to work. He had built up the fire, even though there was no sense in it -- Anders was long past feeling a chill -- but he did it anyway. Unfastening the buckles and untying the laces, removing the coat he could not recall ever seeing Anders without, he undressed Anders and rested him on his stomach, with some of the cleaner portions of his clothes pillowing his face. 

 

Hawke stared at the work of his own knife, the spread of blood that had made the clothes difficult to free and the mark that slid so neatly into the shadow of Anders' ribs. He began there with the bucket and cloth, having to change the water more than once until he was satisfied that his love was as clean as possible.

 

Something in the back of his mind asked him why it mattered at all, when Anders was dead and past caring about his appearance. There was no dignity in the manner of his death, before an angry crowd, and Hawke was determined that Anders' body not be treated like that of a criminal, to be thrown in a common grave. 

 

Hawke left him to gather linens, finding them pressed with lavender, cedar, and rose in the cabinet. There would be no time for flowers nor a funeral. Orana's thoughtfulness regarding household affairs was an unintentional boon in the circumstance. There should be something beautiful to go with Anders into the next world, or to the Maker's side. Hawke wished that he had some religious views of his own to take comfort in, but his family had suffered so terribly that any he had were worn away years before now.

 

Returning to the table, he wrapped Anders in the linens. He paused before the beloved face, the frown and worry lines that were still pressed into Anders' skin, even in death, and the too few marks of smiles. Hawke covered him slowly, thinking of those smiles, of the warmth in Anders' eyes when he looked at Hawke, and when they were alone.

 

He was haunted by them as he began breaking each of the chairs with the Orlasian carvings. When they started to prove stubborn, he fetched an axe and went on. Each armload of wood was carried to the garden, and soon other furniture joined the chairs. Hacking it into suitable pieces, Hawke built the pyre with a terrible numbness settling over his heart, even as tears continued to mist his eyes.

 

He couldn't make himself go into their bedroom.

 

The rest of the house was sacrificed instead. When the pyre had been layered high and deep enough to do its job, Hawke brought Anders to it, arranging him carefully. A lifetime of deaths had taught Hawke how this was to be done.

 

"There can be no half-measures," he said quietly as fire surged from his hands, engulfing all of the wood.

 

 

As Varric told the tale later, Hawke simply disappeared afterward, evading all manner of Seekers and brat princes, but he knew in his chest that too much had been taken, finally, for Hawke to know how to keep going. Hawke's heart had died that day with Anders and if no one else had found him, it was likely that pyre held them both in one final embrace.


End file.
